The underwater city of Rapture was designed to be a place where the population would be rewarded for their loyalty, and where scientists could experiment freely. But things have gone horribly tits up: after mass rebellion, all that’s left are mutated freaks and a place in urgent need of a visit from a handyman. Kudos goes to the artists though – they were allowed to let their creative juices flow, making the 1950s art deco surroundings a joy to behold. That’s when it’s not smothered in blood or about to come crashing down, anyway.

As a survivor of a plane crash, you’re tasked with working your way through the chaos with the assistance of another survivor hoping to escape with his family. Not an easy task, as the inhabitants lost the plot ages ago, due to injecting themselves with various tonics to improve their physical and mental abilities. It doesn’t help that the mayor of Rapture – the malevolent Ryan – refuses to believe that you aren’t a spy either. Fortunately these tonics are easy to get hold of and bestow a range of abilities, most of which have more than one purpose. For instance, electric bolts can not only fry opponents on the spot, but also open damaged electric doors and cause security turrets to temporarily short circuit. New skills are unlocked regularly, but you can only assign a few at a time.

Imagine that you took the best bits of the superlative Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games, but used a first person perspective instead. That’s pretty much Bioshock in a nutshell, with moral decisions, deep narrative, RPG overtones allowing for unique character customisation, and a scarily convincing environment to explore. Then there’s the graphics to take into account – it looks phenomenal, not just nailing water effects square on the head, but also boasting the best looking explosion and fire effects around. We didn’t actually realise that the intro was real-time until we aimlessly wiggled the analogue stick to discover that the camera moved around.

Before you can really start enjoying Bioshock, you have to get your head around the jargon. The idea is to kill Big Daddies (primitive evil Robocops) to save Little Sisters (possessed children) and use them to gain ADAM (experience points) so that you can buy Plasmids (new skills) from vending machines (vending machines). Or if you’re feeling immoral then you can harvest (kill) the Little Sisters to gain more ADAM and therefore acquire more skills quicker. Saving them has its own reward though. The most common enemies are Splicers and they too have different names, like the Spider Splicers that can run along walls. Later you get a camera, and if you catch them – or indeed any enemy – on film you can learn their weak spots, or if you’re lucky get a new tonic.

The best way to sum up Bioshock is this: everything has been polished and finely tuned to perfection, like some sort of well kept submarine. The puzzles are clever – at one point the underwater forest that provides oxygen to the populace is destroyed, needing a solution – the AI is intelligent – enemies hide in shadows and run towards health stations when weak – and even the hacking mini-game, which is a clone of the puzzler Pipemania, is good fun. Checkmate, Halo 3.

When the Xbox 360 Elite was released earlier this month, it had Bioshock and Blue Dragon to bolster its launch. For reasons we cannot comprehend, Sony haven’t bothered to line up anything decent to launch with the £129.99 PSP Slim and Lite – yes, that’s its official name – this week. In fact, there are no PSP games out at all. That’s just dumb.

It’s also a shame, then, that reviews of Heavenly Sword haven’t been overly generous, as it’s arguably the biggest PlayStation 3 game to be released since the system’s launch. Too easy, too short and out of place puzzles seem to be the main gripes. Never mind: Warhawk isn’t far off, and Colin McRae DiRT – out this week – is pretty nifty.

Over on Wii, Super Paper Mario makes an incredibly belated arrival. Then on DS there’s Freshly Picked – Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland, which seems more of a curio than an actual game, the apparently very good Sonic Rush Adventure, Heroes of Mana, Scrabble 2007, dodgy cartoon license Pet Alien and the stupidly titled Imagine: Happy Cooking from Ubisoft.

Hmm, what’s going on with the box art for Fatal Inertia, Koei? The demo wasn’t very impressive, looking worryingly similar to Quantum Redshift on the original Xbox in places. John Woo Presents Stranglehold is worth a look though, particularly if you enjoyed Max Payne. Because it pretty much is an unofficial sequel to Max Payne.

Next week, Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing on Wii. Awesome!

How do you decide what’s cool? You don’t, idiot. You’re told what’s cool by the CoolBrands poll. And this is what’s cool in the UK this year: Aston Martin, iPod and YouTube.

In our world, PlayStation (6th) is cooler than Nintendo (9th). It’s not surprising that PlayStation is the higher, but it’s encouraging that Nintendo is considered cool at all. Xbox was on the cool shortlist, but didn’t come in the top twenty. Japan was the coolest international travel destination, despite our own Matt having been there this year.

The methodology is intriguing though. The opinions of the CoolBrands Council members were combined with the views of 2,246 consumers, with a 70/30 weighting in favour of the Council, whose members include June Sarpong (full name: June Fucking Sarpong).

We all know that the Xbox 360 is struggling in Japan, but if Microsoft’s Tokyo Game Show pre-conference is anything to go by, then they aren’t about to give up just yet. If anything they’re trying to woo the hardcore, by announcing the likes of Castle Shikigami III (AKA Mobile Light Force) and Gundam Operation Troy, along with Xbox Live renditions of Rez and Ikaruga. Dreamcast shooter Triggerheart Exelica, Taito’s PSP puzzler Exit and Every Extend Extra Extreme are still on their way too.

Ninja Gaiden 2 is the one that has managed to get tongues waggling though. It’s due out next year and is surprisingly far into development, with the demo on show having no less than eight stages. Director Itagaki likes to blow his own trumpet: “Our goal with Ninja Gaiden 2 is to create the world’s premier action game, just as DOA4 was the premier fighting game when it was released at the 360’s launch and remains the premier fighting game today. I know that a lot of our fans praised the first NG as being a masterpiece and being flawless. However, as a team, we don’t necessarily agree all the time.” Have a peek at the teaser trailer.

Square-Enix have already supported the console with a couple of games, and we already know about Last Remnant – the “RPG for the world”, due for a simultaneous release in Japan and America – but Infinite Undiscovery is a new one. It’s being developed by Tri-Ace (who did Star Ocean) and has a plot involving the moon crashing into the earth. A Japanese website is already up but there’s not much on there.

They also talked about Kingdom Under Fire Circle of Doom, the third installment in the series. The first two were pretty good – like Dynasty Warriors but deeper. Lost Odyssey – originally announced around the same time as Blue Dragon – is now 95 percent complete and will be released outside Japan in February. The plot for this one is more interesting than Infinite Undiscovery’s – you play through the entire life of a person sentenced to live for 1,000 years, going from boy to very old man.

As well as epicsRPGs and the Xbox Live downloads, there was also stuff like Smash Court Tennis 3, Zoids Alternative – based on the recently re-released toy line – flashy 2D brawler Guilty Gear 2 Overture and Operation Darkness. The last is a tactical shooter set in World War II, featuring Hitler, zombies and werewolves. The trailer reminds us of the underrated Ring of Red on PlayStation 2.

Not a bad showing, all in all. But whether the Japanese will go out and buy them is another matter – RPG Trusty Bell was reduced after just a few weeks due to poor sales. We should see most of these outside of Japan though; Microsoft themselves ended up publishing Japanese releases such as Vampire Rain and Tenchu Z over here recently to fill the summer void.

It’s doubtful that Spectrum or Commodore 64 games will be appearing on the Wii’s Virtual Console any time soon, but Alten8 have a solution – retro compilations Commodore Allstars and Sinclair Spectrum Allstars for both Wii and DS.

If the PC version of Commodore Allstars is anything to go by, we can expect at least 50 titles, including 3D Ant Attack, Bloodwych, Mole on the Dole and 47 others that I haven’t heard of. You might have a better memory than me though – have a look on Alten8’s site.

Last week Jake mentioned that he wasn’t sure if the PlayStation 2 would still be around in winter 2008. Future Publishing must be hoping that it will be – they’re just about to re-launch the Official PlayStation 2 Magazine. A drastic fall in sales is likely to be the main reason, although we’d wager that the average reader age has fallen too.

We’ve got a copy of the new look issue and it’s surprisingly impressive – it’s smaller and thinner, and they’ve done away with the shelf cluttering DVD demo disk case. Design wise it’s like a cross between NGamer and PSM3, but with a cleaner cut look. The PSP reviews, which were confusingly mixed in with the PS2 reviews, now have their own section, and there’s a bigger focus on the PlayStation 2’s back catalogue with ‘lost classics’ being placed under the proverbial microscope. This month: Killer7.

Inside the magazine they confirm that LEGO Indiana Jones is coming to the aging platform (in addition to LEGO Batman) and they also have the first shots of the PlayStation 2 versions of The Simpsons Game and Mercenries 2. The former looks worryingly rough, almost resembling The Simpsons Wrestling on PSone.

Incoming! EA’s Medal of Honor: Airborne has pushed Bioshock off the top spot and into third place, with Tiger Woods 08 sticking at #2. The reportedly rubbish Two Worlds has somehow managed to enter the chart at #4, which probably automatically makes it South Peak Interactive’s best selling game so far. Stuntman: Ignition is on its way up – going from #9 to #6 – while Transformers: The Game has dropped from #4 to #9.

There’s actually quite a bit going on in the rest of the chart – Worms: Open Warfare 2 has wiggled up from #38 to #11 and Boogie has risen from #28 to #13. Xbox 360 RPG Blue Dragon has dropped a massive 17 places, while poor old Rogue Galaxy on PlayStation 2 hasn’t managed to get into the top 40 at all. It does go in at #5 in the PlayStation 2 chart though.

Staying with the single format charts, Monster Hunter: Freedom 2 takes the top of the PSP chart, Blazing Angels II goes in at #12 in the Xbox 360 chart and Tiger Woods 08 is the current king of the Wii fairway.

It seems that every day developers and publishers mishear Nintendo’s plea for casual and accessible games. They seem to hear Iwata-san crying out for glorified screensavers. Today is no exception. Let’s see what today’s stupid barely-interactive idea is:

Two additions to the Zen Games series were announced today by growing UK games publisher, Mercury Games as part of their partnership with Japanese publisher Ertain BV. The games, “Aquarium by DS” and “Fantasy Aquarium by DS” both for the Nintendo DS are simulation games that allow the player to keep fish in a tank.

Yes. It’s a fishtank simulator. Or two to be precise, because normal fish and “fantasy” fish couldn’t possibly fit on the same cart, and neither do the targeted demographics overlap.

I can imagine someone angrily browsing the racks of Game, throwing carts in all directions shouting, “I wanted FANTASY fish ONLY. Monkfish WILL NOT DO.”

Anyway, the fish need to be fed and the tank cleaned, I guess by rubbing the screen. Fantasy fish don’t even include imaginative made up things like the flangefish, either. It’s just sharks and dolphins and stuff. That’s a pretty shite fantasy. Amazingly you can swap fish (of which there are 30 varieties) over WiFi, and big sharks will eat little fish.

It’s coming out in December for 20 quid and if you buy it you deserve all that you get.

It looks like the cherished N64 shooter Sin & Punishment could finally be making an appearance outside of Japan, via the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Not only has it been listed as one of the upcoming releases on the Japanese Virtual Console schedule, but according to numerous Nintendo sites, Australia’s rating board – the OFLC – has just given it an M (Mature) rating. Australia is, of course, a PAL territory.

Nintendo once said that Virtual Console releases would be limited to games that had an original release in the territory, but if the above is true then it means that they’ve gone back on their word. Which isn’t a bad thing.

There are no less than six stat-filled RPG epics out this week. In fact, if you class Monster Hunter 2 on PSP an RPG, that figure grows to a monstrous seven. There’s also Blazing Angels 2 and Medal of Honor: Airbourne if you fancy shooting people to bits rather than hitting them to death with 50+ longswords.

Of the seven, Rogue Galaxy on PlayStation 2 would appear to be the one to go for – reviews have been positive and it’s by Dark Cloud / Chronicle developers Level-5. Also on PlayStation 2 is Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria from Square Enix. We don’t know anything about it, to be honest. Then on PSP there’s Valhalla Knights – which boasts of a two-player co-op mode and over 150 enemies – Sega’s Alien Syndrome (also on Wii) which looks incredibly mediocre, and Namco’s Tales of the World Radiant Mythology. Which we also know nothing about. Sorry!

This leaves the mysterious Two Worlds on Xbox 360, which sounds promising – your actions change the world around you – but currently only has an average review score of 53 percent, according to Game Rankings. Gameare doing a collector’s pack with a hologram slipcase, game world map and soundtrack CD, but obviously that won’t make the game any better.

So, Medal of Honor: Airbourne. A lot of people have been surprised by this, with both Eurogamer and gamesTM giving it an 8. The demo on Xbox Live is quite fun, but you have to remember that Call of Duty 4 – which looks phenomenal – is only two months away. Then there’s EA’s own Army of Two, which could potentially shake up the genre.

Next week: heavenly for PlayStation 3 owners.

Nintendo were once concerned about their family image, famously forcing Acclaim to remove the gore from the SNES version of Mortal Kombat and – less famously – remove all signs of alcohol from Duke Nuke’em: Zero Hour on the N64. With the Wii still yet to see its first birthday, we’ve already seen a barrage of foul-mouthed and blood-stained games, with Scarface slotting neatly into this category. The chainsaw is available after just a few missions, and instead of ‘Game Over’ or ‘Mission Failed’ appearing on the screen upon Tony popping his cogs, the words ‘You Fucked Up’ appear. There’s nothing like being blunt. Unless you’re talking about James Blunt.

Rather than using the plot of the classic 1983 movie as inspiration, the game is set a few months afterwards with Tony Montana somehow coming back from the dead. The first task is to raise enough cash to get your mansion back – which is still covered in police tape, incidentally – before regaining control of the drug trade, forcing rivals off your turf and building up respect. Driving erratically – not unlike you would do in a Burnout game – boosts your ‘balls’ rating, plus you can taunt both gang members and innocents by shaking the nunchuk as you walk past. Buying or selling drugs involves a little mini-game in which a moving cursor has to be stopped in a certain area, with the same system also used for talking your way out of trouble. Cash gained from dodgy dealings can then be blown on henchmen, furniture for the mansion and more.

Like most Wii conversions it’s not much of a looker, resembling a hotchpotch of the rough PlayStation 2 version and the somewhat smoother Xbox version. The textures are sharp enough, but the characters looks like clones of one another, and often you can see the ‘seams’ in the environments and such.

Radical have obviously put a lot of thought into the controls though – vehicles are great fun to drive, with the A button on the Wii remote used to accelerate and the Z-trigger on the nunchuk to reverse. The cursor is a little slow moving during gun battles, although it’s possible to lock onto enemies, and pressing down on the d-pad handily swings the camera around 180 degrees. Shaking the nunchuk sends Montana into a rage mode, for which the screen goes red and the action is viewed from the first person. It’s best to save this for when you’re in a jam – Montana often finds himself out-gunned.

The ’80s soundtrack may be an acquired taste, but there’s certainly plenty to like here – Montana’s foul mouth alone is likely to raise a few smiles. We’re also fond of the way that you can target specific body parts. Ever wondered how good you are at shooting people in the kidney? Here you’ll get to find out.

Speed Racer is a film being made by those there Wachowski brothers. It’s due next summer, when video game incarnations for Wii and Nintendo DS will be released. Because, as the real news has been reporting of late, Nintendo seem to be on to pretty much the most popular thing ever with the Wii. And the DS isn’t doing badly either.

A PlayStation 2 version has also been confirmed, but that’s due to coincide with the DVD release. Which will be, what, Christmas 2008? Someone – presumably someone at publishers Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment – obviously thinks the PlayStation 2 is going to live on until then. To be honest, I can’t work out whether I should agree or not. Thoughts?